All Things for Good, Part 1

John Piper

John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including A Peculiar Glory.

And we know that God causes all things to work together
for good to those who love God, to those who are called according
to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also
predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He
would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these
whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He
also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for
us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own
Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with
Him freely give us all things?

Today we come to one of the most sweeping and most loved
promises in all the Bible, Romans 8:28. "And we know that God
causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,
to those who are called according to His purpose." Perhaps more
than any other promise in the Bible this verse has helped people
trust God through experiences that seemed utterly pointless and
painful and evil. People have held fast to the "all things" and
believed the word of God — this too, this terrible thing,
this seemingly pointless thing, will turn out for my good.

Years ago I taught the Bethlehem children — and all the
childlike — to say,

When things don’t go the way they should,
God always makes them turn for good.

Christians believe that, sooner or later, the sorrows and pains
and disappointments and losses will work together for good.

I know that the translations differ here a little bit. But I
don’t think the differences are serious. The NASB
makes God the subject of the verb and "all things" the direct
object: "God causes all things to work together for good." The
NIV also makes God the subject but makes "all things" the
sphere of his working, not the object: "In all things God works for
the good." The King James and the English Standard
Version make "all things" the subject: "All things work
together for good."

All these are possible from the Greek wording. And they are not
in the end very different. When the King James says, "all
things work together for good," it does not mean, they work that
way on their own, or by some power of fate. It means that God makes
all things work together for good. So God is the one
working in all three of these translations, and what he is bringing
about is good, and what he is bringing good out of is
"all things." Paul is not saying all things are
good. He is saying all things are turned by God for good.

Next week when we go outside and worship in one great crowd on
the parking lot in front of all the neighbors, I am going to try to
unpack this promise with Biblical and historical and personal
illustrations. How do all things work for good? Good now? Or good
later? What kind of good? That’s next week.

But today I want to focus not on the promise itself, but what it
is that makes a person a beneficiary of the promise. Today we will
ask: How can I know the promise is for me? And next Sunday we will
ask: What does this text really promise me?

The Promise Is Not for Every Person

So the first thing we need to see today is that all things
don’t work together for good for everybody. The promise that
God will turn all things for good is not true in everybody’s
case. There are two things that need to be true for this promise to
apply to you. One is that you love God, and the other is that you
are called according to his purpose. "And we know that God causes
all things to work together for good (1) to those who love
God, (2) to those who are called according to His
purpose." I will deal with the first one today and the second
one later.

Paul says, in effect, if you don’t love God, you
can’t claim this promise. If you are not called according to
his purpose, you can’t claim this promise. Or to put it
another way, for the person who does not love God and is not called
according to his purpose, final optimism is foolish and out of
place. Pessimism is exactly the right state of mind for one who
does not love God and is not called according to his purpose.
Things are not going to work for his good, but for his harm.

Romans 2:5 describes the way this person’s experience
affects his future: "Because of your hard and impenitent heart you
are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's
righteous judgment will be revealed." In other words, the
experiences this person walks through each day don’t turn for
good; they turn for wrath. The pleasant things that he
does not thank God for, or make a means of worship, will condemn
him someday. The painful things that he walks through,
without trusting God’s help, will store up wrath for the last
day. He may look poor; or he may look prosperous in this world. But
if he does not love God and is not called according to God’s
purpose, all his experiences are not leading to good, but to
eternal misery.

What Must Be True of Us for This Promise to Be Ours?

That is not the way we want to be. We want to hear this promise
as ours. We want to know that all things are working together for
our good, not for our condemnation. So what must be true of us?
Let’s take them one at a time — one this week, one
later.

First, Paul says that we must be people who love God. In the
original, this is the first thing in the verse: "We know that
for those who love God all things work together for good."
What does he mean by loving God?

First, he does not mean that you go in an out of loving
God, and if you have a bad experience when you are loving God it
turns for your good, and if you have a bad experience when you are
not loving God it turns for bad. We know he doesn’t mean
that, because he clarifies "those who love God" with the
description at the end of the verse: "those who are called
according to [God’s] purpose." This calling (which we will
talk about later) is not something that happens over and over. It
is the effective, once-for-all work of God to call me from death to
life, and from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to
God, and from enmity toward God to loving God. The calling into
love and faith is once for all, and so love for God is the mark of
the truly called person — all the time. Of course, our love
for God has moments of intensity and moments of weakness —
just like every other love relationship we have. But in those who
are called, love for God is what defines them. It’s the
abiding condition of our hearts — whether strong or weak.

So Paul is not saying all things work for good for Christians
some of the time (when their love for God is strong), and all things
don’t work for good for Christians some of the time (when
their love for God is weak). He is saying that for Christians
— the called, those whose hearts have been brought from
enmity to love for God — all things work for good all the
time.

What the Love of God Is Not

So what does it mean to love God? How can you know if you are in
this number? The best way I can think to make the answer clear is
to say three things that love for God is not. At least the
essence of love for God is not these three things.

Loving God is not meeting his needs. The way we love man is
different from the way we love God. In Acts 17:25 Paul said, "He
[is not] served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since
He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things." God
is radically different from us. He is the source of all things and
has no needs. He cannot be helped or improved. There are no defects
to reverse or deficiencies to supply. We cannot love him by
supplying his needs. He has none. Therefore the essence of our love
for him must be an experience of receiving. (And I do regard joy as
essentially receiving pleasure from the object of our delight.)

That leads to the second thing that love for God is
not. Loving God is not, in its essence, love for his
gifts — gifts like forgiveness, justification,
escape from hell, resurrection to a pain-free life, etc. Indeed if
we love God, we will cherish these gifts and be thankful for them,
because we would not have God without them. But loving God is
treasuring God himself revealed in his gifts and treasuring God
himself beyond his gifts. His gifts are precious to the degree that
they bring us to God and show us more of God. When you love God,
God is central in your affections, not his gifts.

This word "affections" leads us to the third thing that love for
God is not. The essence of loving God is not the things
that love for God prompts you to do. Love for God may prompt you to
leave mother and father and forsake all that to declare his glory
among the nations. But leaving mother and father and forsaking all
are not the essence
of love — they are the fruit of love.
Jesus said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." This
does not mean keeping his commandments is love. It means love is
the kind of heart that prompts you to keep commandments.

In John 21:15-17 Jesus illustrates this connection when he asks
Simon Peter three times, "Do you love me?" When Peter says, "Yes,"
Jesus does not say, "Good, that must mean you are obeying my
commandments, because obeying my commandments is love."
No, he said, "Feed my sheep." In other words, if you love me, act
like it. Love my flock and feed them. Feeding sheep is the fruit of
loving Jesus.

In other words, what I am saying is that love for God is a
matter of the heart’s esteem for God before it produces
anything else. It is something internal and involves spiritual
emotions. It is not, in essence, a deliberated choice or a deed. It
is more like a reflex of the heart to the perfections of God
revealed especially in Christ. If you equate the deeds of love with
the essence of love you will produce hypocrites — people who
imitate the deeds and claim to love God when their hearts are far
from him. If you equate love for God with love for his gifts, you
produce hypocrites — people who are very glad to feel
forgiven and declared righteous and delivered from hell and
heaven-bound, but have no pleasure in God himself. They don’t
love God. They just don’t want to have bad guilt feelings or
go to hell.

What the Love of God Is

Therefore I think it is absolutely crucial that we clarify what
the essence of love for God is. Let me grasp for the kinds of words
that I think will help us know if we love God. Loving God is
desiring God himself beyond his gifts. Loving God is
treasuring God himself beyond his gifts. Love for God is
delighting in God himself beyond his gifts. Love for God
is being satisfied in God himself beyond his gifts. Love
for God is cherishing God himself beyond his gifts. Love
for God is savoring God himself beyond his gifts. Love for
God is valuing God and prizing God and
revering God and admiring God beyond his gifts.
All these words are grasping for that essential response of the
heart to the revelation of the glory of God, especially in Christ
through the gospel. It is a glad reflex of the heart to all that
God is for us in Christ.

A Catch-22 Effect for Some from Romans 8:28

Do you love God in this way? Let me help you love him by
exploding a certain Catch-22 effect that Romans 8:28 has on some
people. Suppose you come to this promise in Romans 8:28 and feel
yourself excluded. You say, "This promise must be true for me so
that I can love God in response." But you see that this won’t
work, because the promise is not true for you unless you love God.
"The promise must be true for me," you say, "so I can love God. I
must love God so the promise can be true for me. Catch 22."

This is the trap of many people who think that the love of God
is essentially gratitude for his blessings. I will love God when he
treats me well enough, because, they say, love for God is
essentially a response to receiving his gifts. There is no way out
of that trap and that Catch 22 in Romans 8:28 if you hold on to
that meaning of love for God. The promise must be true for me so I
can love God in response; and yet I must love God for the promise
to be true for me.

The escape from the trap — and I invite you to take it
right now — is to look through the promise to God
himself first, before he applies the promise to you, and behold God
himself in and through his promise. Look first at all that
he has done in history to reveal himself. Look especially at Jesus
Christ and the glory that he had before he came, and the glory of
his sacrificial coming and his servanthood and suffering. Look at
the mercy and wrath and justice of God mingled on the cross for
utterly undeserving sinners. Look at the power and righteousness of
God in raising Jesus from the dead. Look at new-covenant,
promise-keeping faithfulness that pours out the Holy Spirit on
sinful people. Look at the triumph of God’s grace to change
hostile God-neglecters into humble God-lovers.

Look at God in all these ways, I say, and behold the God you
were made for. Behold the fulfillment of all your desires. Behold
the most satisfying treasure in the universe. And then when you see
his glory and his worth, and when you treasure him, then the
promise is yours. All things will work together for your good,
because you love God.

And what if you say to me, "Pastor John, I don’t feel like
looking at God. I just want to go home and watch television. I just
want to be with my friends. I just want to eat and work on my
house. I don’t feel any desire to look to God"? To this I
respond, "If there is any remnant of fear, if there is any shred of
desire to desire, O endangered sinner, use it to pray the promise
of Deuteronomy 30:6, ‘O Lord circumcise my heart — change
my heart — to love you with all my heart and soul, so that I
may live, and all things may work together for my good. Have mercy
upon me that I may love you.’"